Everything is Always Changing
by onemakaveli96
Summary: Set post 2x03, an injured but healing Chuck asks Sarah to stay with him the night, which prompts her to ruminate over their situation, his words in the courtyard, and who she is to Chuck. One-shot, Sarah's perspective, Chuck/Sarah undertones.


**Title:**Everything is Always Changing (but maybe you're the truth)  
**Rating:**T  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s):**Sarah, Chuck/Sarah  
**Summary:**_It's all so impractical--for her to want to lay down next to her injured charge...'He's your injured charge', she has to remind herself, 'emphasis __on injured and charge__.' But his fingers loop around hers, which had been resting against his fingers, and he tugs her, so her knees fall on the bed._  
**Note:** Set post 2x03.This was written for a friend over at LJ, but I thought I should share this here, too. **ETA:** This site sucks, as it always screws up something or another. I'd like to thank **Gege** for pointing out a couple of typos, caused by the site and not me for once! Apparently this place has a thing against italics...And this has come up before, so I'll clarify--the term "peace" is used here rather than "piece" & yes, I did that on purpose. Anywho, enjoy! :)

* * *

"Stay."

His voice is rough, his throat obviously dry, his energy obviously barely recovering.

With a sigh, she twists her head from the doorway as her left hand grips the door frame.

With a soft, blowy, whispery breath, she says, "Chuck."

She watches as his eyes struggle to just flutter open so he can look at her, but the struggle alone is enough for her feet to move towards his bed. She catches his hand and presses her fingers against his knuckles when she hears his breath soften at her touch.

Her eyes move over the dark bruise to the upper left of his forehead, then her eyes tread to the cut on his lower lip (which is healing, but still swells a bit), and yes there's nothing more that she wants to do than softly brush her hands over the small wounds. And there's nothing more she wants than to brush her lips over the bandaged stab wound on the lower right of his abdomen. And it's all so impractical--for her to want to lay down next to her injured charge just so she can lightly touch and kiss him. '_He's your injured charge_,' she has to remind herself, '_emphasis __on injured and charge__.'_

But his fingers loop around hers, which had been resting against his fingers, and he tugs her, so her knees fall on the bed.

He doesn't attempt to say another word, and she doesn't need further convincing anyway. She nods with a tight throat, sits herself down on the bed, lines her legs vertically with the bed sheets, and for some seconds takes her fingers from Chuck's so she can take off her jacket.

When she lies her head down, with Chuck's own head mere inches from hers, she feels her chest constrict and breathing harden. This (lying down next to Chuck) used to be so simple when they played the part of boyfriend/girlfriend. It was easy for her anyhow, and she has to bite her lip at the irony of it all, because she knows now it wasn't easy for him because he hated lying to his friends and family, but rather he found it difficult because he hated lying to himself and Sarah about what he really felt when she lay next to him.

His feelings are out in the open now, however, and he's said his peace about how he feels about her and what he feels in regards to their situation. And it's unfair, 'so damn unfair,' she screams in her mind as she chokes back a tear when Chuck grips her hand harder. It's so unfair of him to do this to her.

So they've had to live around and with the issue that arose after Bryce reappeared in their lives. Chuck is still so awkward, sincere, and warm at times, and some would even say he's just the same and nothing has changed. But she feels the inches of coldness he puts between himself and her every now and them. Every time it's like he's cutting at a cord he once worked so hard on building, and that she eventually began contributing to as well (however consciously or subconsciously that may have been). Now she feels like she's contributing to a thread that has lost its foundation.

But tonight he called out to her. There was helplessness and need in his call. "Stay," he said as if everything had been dug and the only thing they had and mattered were each other.

It's not a cold night, and it's not a cold room, but a shiver runs up her spine as she recalls the warmth of his lips in conjunction with that small speech he recited to her no more than two weeks and four days ago in the courtyard outside his apartment home.

"Chuck," she whispers minutes after she's laid down, but there is no hint of a response, just his steady breathing and slightly weakening grip on her hand that indicate that the sedatives have taken full affect and he's completely asleep.

Turning on her side, with Chuck's hand still in hers, she poises her other hand over the dark, purple bruise staining the skin on his forehead. A sigh escapes her when instead of brushing against the small mark, her index and middle finger touch against his nose. Hesitantly she pries her fingers away, but before drifting off to sleep herself, she draws her lips to the base of his neck and plants a small kiss against it.

Burying her head in the crook of his neck is out of the question, but somehow when she wakes up the next morning, that's where she finds herself buried.

Her legs feel a little cramped from being bent together while she laid on her side, and her right shoulder is sore from her sleeping on it, but awaking to the smell and feel of his neck on her nose smoothes over the pains.

Still as asleep as ever, Chuck's chest rises and falls with even breaths as Sarah's peripheral vision eyes his closed eyelids and ruffled hair. She smiles to herself and pushes down the jump in her stomach that comes when she thinks of what Chuck does and does not encompass.

Strangely enough, their hands were still interloped when she awoke, so she pulls her hand free so she can press her hand against the mattress and with her other arm, she hoists herself up by the elbow and balances her head on that palm. When she's managed to balance herself while her face hovers just above Chuck's, she licks her lips and opens her mouth.

"Your sister thinks we're in Miami, taking some coupley vacation. But we were supposed to be back last night," she whispers, her lips mere inches from his ears, accompanied by a small morbid chuckle, "until that bastard stabbed you. And what did I tell her? Not that her brother had_another_near-death experience, but rather that we decided to stay another day. She thought it was the most romantic thing in the world."

A couple of tears fall from Sarah's eyes, but her eyelashes brush the lot of the weight of them before they trickle down her cheeks and disappear from sight.

Sarah breathes in deeply, breathes out shallowly.

"You know, you were right. I will never be normal. I work for the CIA. I do whatever it takes to protect the government, and that means taking on aliases and doing things in the morally grey area. But…," and she pauses so her eyes can sweep over his eyes and so her ears can detect if there are any changes in his breathing, to ensure that he remains asleep.

Nodding inwardly, she continues--"but no matter what I do, no matter where I go, and no matter what alias I take, I will always be Sarah for you. I am more me with Sarah than I have been with any other name, and you're to blame for that."

She smiles down to Chuck, half-glad he's asleep, and half-disheartened that he can't hear her.

"And no matter what I do, you will always be the priority when it comes down to protecting things. Because you have to live, Chuck, you have to live not just because you're the intersect, but because you're you. You have to survive, and when you've survived it all--because you will--you will begin to live. For both of us. That's all I want, Chuck."

She licks her lips to wipe at the few tears that have befallen. Salty wounds burn her tongue, so her tongue recoils and instead she shakes her head and slowly she wipes at her tears with a few strokes of her thumb.

Amidst doing this, with her hand half-blocking her mouth, and in a sorry tone she murmurs, "and I want you."

A knock on the door draws her back, and she swings her legs off the bed and sits upright with now dried eyes, but before she can verbally respond to the knock the door flies open to reveal Agent Casey. Really, she's surprised he knocked, but is glad he did because otherwise he might have found her in a more compromising position.

"Give me a moment," she says with as much posture and detachment as possible. He cocks an eyebrow at her but gives her a nod. He leaves, but the door is left open.

She crosses her legs underneath her, turns her head towards Chuck, and leans over just so that her face meets his left cheek.

She closes her eyes, and in a quick murmur voices, "I was going to tell you that Chuck--that maybe it'd never work and it was too complicated, but at the end of the day I was Sarah and you were Chuck. But that…that was naïve of me. I'm not Sarah, and you made it clear that I can never be more than that to you."

She leaves him with a kiss on his forehead, mere inches from the slowly fading bruise.

She leaves him to awaken in a room on his own, with his hand in a lazy fist that immediately attempts to tighten around something no longer there.

His vision is not all that clear, and it is that haziness that he blames for the voice and words of Sarah's he might have heard. The same haziness he pinpoints as being the reason he thought that maybe he asked her to stay with him the night before, a request to which she may have complied. Of course, even if he had asked, he's pretty sure she wouldn't have stayed--at least not the entirety of the night. And she definitely would not have spoken to him while he was knocked out on whatever drugs they dosed him with. If she had, the words wouldn't be anywhere near related to some whisperings of vulnerability. That wasn't very much like the Sarah he knew.


End file.
